They landed, and the next generation looked very similar to the last one...

I have had a few occasions to play with the new console systems from Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. At the outset I was excited. There seemed to be some promise of improvement here. But what was it exciting me exactly? It was not the material conditions, technology is technology does. In an age of convergence being moved by the integration of technology is down right silly, you just end up getting anxious when something isn't connected. On the other hand, was it really as simple as my own expectations? The promises being made around the next-gen systems seemed to suggest a consistent improvement. The Wii innovated control design, the XBox 360 improved its various markets and online interaction, and the PS3 seemed to offer itself as a very powerful media center. Yet for all these promises, only the Wii still interests me. Why? Because when you look at the graphics on the PS3 and the 360 you are still getting jagged digital rendering. In the case of the PS3 this is generated by you actually taking advantage of its HDMI capability. In the case of the 360 this is caused by your inability to use HDMI but wish to push things further on flat panel screens. The Wii works for me, because you did not have to expect excessive leaps forward in the presentation. The PS3 and the 360 promised greater appearances, but to my eye they have failed.

A few reasons might be supposed for this. Perhaps developers have not had time to come to grips with the hardware. Maybe the timing of release should have been delayed. But in the end, all these next-gen systems seem to do is make their smaller cousins more attractive: the Playstation Portable, the Nintendo DS, and even the runt of the next-generation, the Wii.

Having a lot of promise does not give us the material satisfaction. Schopenhauer identifies this quite neatly in his critique of Kant's idealism, "Sex knows how to slip its love notes into ministerial portfolios and philosophical manuscripts." (from On The Basis of Morality) Perhaps then we need to return to the perplexing state that we are at once objectivised beings, human beings, and at the same moment SUBJECTS. How strange it is to be a subject in a world full of objects. When a promise is made it relies on there being some commensurability of subjectivity and objectivity. Alas, we will always be disappointed by this. In abstraction, even if one engages in a promised objective act subjective countenance need not be realised until we subjectivise the objective act, transform its objective status into a meaning.